


Blood Rites

by starkraving



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Fantasy Racism, Gen, Nightmares, Self-Harm, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, Team as Family, Trust Issues, but just molly's blood rite stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 21:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15227799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: A few moments between moments. On the road from Labenda, a few members of the party interact with Mollymauk. He’s weird, sure, but his teammates are weirder sometimes. Featuring Nott and day-drinking and Fjord with some really active night terrors… meaning terrifying for Molly.





	Blood Rites

Nott’s always thought it looked a little painful honestly.

Mollymauk’s blood rites, I mean. Those. They look painful, but it doesn’t seem to bother Molly and, well, she prefers Molly effectively killing things to Molly not effectively killing things, so at the end of the day whether she thinks it looks painful or not is a pointless thing really. A passing thought and she’s not sure she should mention it. It’s somewhere between Labenda Swamp and Huperdook that she decides, because the long stretches of road between one city and the next so easily invite conversation and Molly gets bored between interesting things.

She darts around, up into the cart so she’s sitting on the back of the wagon, her feet dangling over the edge, tiny hands clasped between her knees and peers hopefully at Molly, who’s walking behind the cart, keeping his strange red eyes on the far horizon on rolling hills. The others have mostly fanned out and paired up, chatting or walking in amiable but resigned silence into the long day. Jester is napping with Kiri in the wagon. A small cacophony of snores can be heard from under a blanket, mixed faintly with small bird-like whistling.

Molly grins at Nott once he notices her looking.

“Hey, trouble, what’s on your mind?”

“Oh,” Nott says, reaching uncomfortably for her flask, “not much.” She uncaps the flask and takes a swig from its neverending contents then, after taking a very, very long and burning pull, she offers it to Molly. “Something to pass the time?”

Molly blinks, then grins all the wider, baring a glitter of tiefling fangs that would perhaps be scary in any face but Mollymauk’s. The commitment to his smile dimples his face and creases the corners of his eyes so naturally – joy fits his features, lavender or not.

“I knew I liked you best,” he jokes, accepting the flask and for a while they pass it back and forth.

At some point Molly got hold of Beauregard’s short-staff. He has it laid across his shoulders for some reason, his forearms draped over the top of it on either side of his head. As he drinks and chats idly with her about the taste of enchanted and never-ending booze (and the implied arcane machinations of such a thing) the gold chains riveted into the bony ridges of his horns sparkle distractingly. The hammered metal that caps the curl of his dark, gray rams-horns, is silver on the left and gold on the right.

“Where do you go to get tiefling jewelry?” Nott asks at last, because that seems normal enough.

“Hmm? Oh, these?” He points to the horn caps and bone-bands. “Nah, gotta request it made. Not enough of my kind around that you see us catered to. Besides, it’s hardly one size fits all.” He flaps a tattooed hand at her, various rings glinting from sharply clawed fingers. “Next time I get refitted, I’ll have to bring you along. Watching jewelers struggle with horn customization is always kind of fun.”

Nott sips at her flask, feeling much braver as she warms up. “Do you often have trouble getting people to service tieflings?”

Molly smiles at her. It’s a jackal grin.

“I – I mean!” She sputters furiously. “You know what I mean!”

He snickers. “Yes, I know. And the answer is ‘sometimes’. Small towns are a dice roll.” He shrugs. “The bigger cities I don’t usually have any trouble. Maybe a mean mug or a price gouge here or there, but nothing that’ll do me harm.” His smile is still lazy but there’s a little tension in it. “Yasha could tell you some stories.”

“Okay, but you could also, you know, tell me stories,” Nott points out.

“I’m probably better story teller.”

“Yes.”

“Love Yasha. She’s the best.” He places a hand over his heart. “Monosyllabic.”

“She is quiet,” Nott agrees, still sipping at the flask and feeling much less nervous now about chatting with Molly. Not that chatting with Molly is ever particularly difficult but… “She’s known you a while, huh?”

“Well, over a quarter of my life,” Molly muses.

“Oh yes. That… that must be nice, that you’re still together even if the Circus is done.”

“The continuity is nice.” A beat. “That and it’s much harder to say mean things to me when Yasha is standing behind me.”

“I certainly understand that,” Nott mutters, handing the flask back to Molly.

He considers her over the canteen. “We both have our guardian angels, don’t we?”

Nott glances down the road where Caleb is talking to Yasha about something. The giant barbarian woman peers curiously down at him while he gestures, having lit upon a topic he enjoys which suggests that Yasha is going to be lost in the subclauses of higher arcana, but she seems interested nevertheless. It fills Nott with a burning twist of happiness and nerves simultaneously.

“Yes,” she says nervously.

It’s quiet for a moment.

“Your boy Caleb will never turn on you, you know.” Molly takes a long pull from the flask and gestures with it. “I mean, if it came down to it and he had to choose, he’s gonna choose you. Pretty sure that’s a forever thing, no matter how much he gets to like the rest of us, you’re first for him I think.” He smiles and it’s a comforting kind of grin, meant to reassure. “That’s my feeling. And I’m a great fortune teller, you know.”

“You mean like your swords are magic?” Nott says dryly. “Or you’re descended from ancient volcano royalty?”

“Be honest, how much of that did you buy when I said that the first time?”

“Not a single word. Are you kidding?”

Molly laughs. He’s got a good laugh. The kind you want to hear ago so you might stick around just to please him kind of laugh, like you could wrap yourself up in it and sit by a fire. That kind of laugh. So Nott hates to ruin a good thing, but better to do it on a good note than a bad one. Better to do it just a little buzzed and on the coat tails of victory in Lebenda.

“Can I ask you something, Molly?”

“Sure.” He beams. “I might even answer.”

She fidgets. “Well, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want. I just was wondering, uh, if what you do… Hmm, the thing with your swords?” Oh gods, this is going well. “Doesn’t it hurt? You know, the… the cutting and stuff?”

He looks curiously at her. “No, not really. I’ve gotten used to it. Why do you ask?”

“Well, in the swamp, when we were fighting that troll… there was this moment, uh, this moment where you just…” She pauses, then reaches a hand out and Molly, amused, gives her the flask back so she can down another mouthful. “There was a moment where you were cutting into that troll and the blood was getting on you and it was burning but you just kept going and going. And it was burning you but you just wouldn’t stop so I was… I was wondering if you just don’t feel pain as much but that’s… I don’t think that’s the case. Right?”

Molly hesitates then, seeing the true shape of her question now, his expression softening at the edge a little.

“If you’re asking whether or not that hurt, the answer is yes. Like a _bitch_.”

“Does it hurt every time?”

“Every time I get hit with _acid_? Yes, Nott, that would hurt. Are you thinking of throwing some at me?”

“WHAT?! NO! Of course not!” Nott clamps down her indignant squawk. “The blood rites? That’s what you’re doing, yes? Those hurt every time.”

A beat.

“Yes, it does hurt every time.” He grins. “But it’s not that bad, honestly. And Jester takes care of me so I’ll be exactly this pretty no matter how many times I get fucked up. Besides, at this point, I’m used to it.”

“Aren’t you a little _young_ to be used to it though?”

Another beat, longer this time.

Molly’s grin has dropped off.

“I’m not ‘young’ I’m just… operating on limited life experience. What are you asking?”

“Shit. I don’t know. I just… that looked very painful and I didn’t like. That’s all.”

Molly seems nonplused. “Nott, it’s what I’m here for. If I can’t fight then I’m not much use to you lot, am I?” A shrug. “Besides, this is what we do in a group: You look out for one another. I’ll do what needs doing to keep everyone safe, just like Beau, Fjord, Jester, and everyone else.”

Nott doesn’t mean to do it, but she can’t help it. Her eyes drop briefly to the layers of thin, pale scars that mark Molly’s visible neck and collarbones – hundreds and hundreds of paper-fine cuts that were not knitted quickly by healing magic but left to scar. Molly is pretty vain. She has to wonder if those scars predate the current version of himself. If Lucien or Nonogon or whoever the fuck came before might be the ones responsible for that. Molly simply inheriting a history of violence penned into skin. She tries to imagine that. Can’t.

She meets Molly’s strange eyes again.

“I’m sorry for what I said before by the way.”

He blinks. “You’re losing me here, Nott. What are we talking about?”

“Sorry. I mean when I said about looking into your past.” She clears her throat. “Uh, I think, maybe, it would be okay not to do that too. I just meant if you ever… if you _wanted_ to go find out those things that I would definitely help.” She clears her throat again. “I would help. That’s all. I’m not saying you… you have to. I don’t know. I don’t think I quite understand you still.”

Molly’s expression then is hard to read, just a still neutral look. Studying her.

“Is there something else you want to ask me about my past?” he asks slowly.

“No, no! That’s not what I mean. I just… I don’t think I understand it. I don’t think I _can_. That’s what I’m saying. And it took me a bit to think it over and I think I was giving you advice like you were… like it was something I could understand and I don’t think I actually do. So ignore my advice. That’s what I’m saying.” She guzzles another swallow of whiskey and blurts, “What do I know?! I’m a goblin for gods’ sake. Haha!”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have good advice,” Molly says gently.

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“No. It’s just true.” Mollymauk shrugs, Beauregard’s staff bobbing on his shoulders. “Great advice can come from anywhere.” He gives her a strange, somewhat restrained smile. “Some of the best life lessons I’ve had came from bad people and you’re not bad people, Nott. Despite what you might think about your very own self. Take it from me, you’re alright.”

“I appreciate that.”

Things are quiet again for a moment. It’s companionable.

Then, “Maybe it helps to look at it like this,” Molly says. He’s watching the hills beyond the road. Not meeting her eyes as his speaks, almost as if he’s talking to himself as he thinks it through. “If Lucien or Nonagon, or whoever got to come back… that would be killing Mollymauk. Like they were killing me so they could live.” He looks at Nott. “Does that make sense? This version of me would stop existing. I wouldn’t be me anymore. I’d be gone sure as if you killed me.”

“I… I suppose so.”

“Just think of it in those terms. Don’t over think it.”

“Alright.”

“And if someone ever comes along and tells you different, they’re full of shit.”

Nott ponders that. “Molly, if anyone ever comes along and tries to take you from us, they’ll get a good stabbing. I promise.”

Molly snorts. “Appreciated.”

 

* * *

 

Fjord wakes up in the middle of the night in a dead cold. Shivering, breathing hard. There’s salt on his skin and he can’t tell now if it’s sea water or sweat but the ache in his gut crawls deep and undeniable through him. He can’t recollect the dream now but the hunger is the only phantom pain left in waking… and it won’t fade. He lies there, waiting, waiting, but it won’t fucking fade. This ravenous heat burning through his belly and in a fever, he tears the blankets off his body, jerking upright in his cot and clutching his stomach with both hands.

The ache persists. It persists. It keeps persisting and terror takes him then.

Panicked, he rolls over and grabs Mollymauk by the shoulder, his sleeping bunkmate slow to rouse. Molly sleeps like a rock and through the gap in the tent entrance a pale section of moonlight faintly illuminates a thin slice of his shoulder and neck, just enough low-light that Fjord’s half-orc eyes can pick out the details as he furiously seizes and shakes Molly by the shoulders. The tiefling jerks, snorting, red eyes jolting wide at the (understandably) alarming vision of Fjord kneeling over him in the darkness and manhandling him to consciousness.

“Gods! Fuck! What?” Molly thrashes briefly in Fjord’s grip before relaxing in his teammate’s hold. He squints up him, hands gripping Fjord’s wrists, fingers tight on the leatherwork in each bracer. “Fjord? What is it?” He’s whispering now. It’s difficult to tell where Molly is looking at any time because his pupils are invisible in the red film over his eyes, but he seems to be looking around for enemies and, finding none, blinks. Confused. “Fjord?”

“You gotta get out,” Fjord hisses.

“What?”

“Get away from me.”

“ _Whatthefucknow_?”

Fjord grabs Molly by the shoulders and hauls him bodily toward to tent entrance, the low ceiling brushing his head as he does. Molly squawks, indignant and resists, yanking backward with all his strength which is enough to pull Fjord back to his knees. Molly’s awake now, fangs bared in the dark. He’s holding Fjord now by the wrists to keep him in place. In close quarters, Molly’s breath has a faint iron tang, like the inside of a forge. Like speaking Infernal puts the scent of fire on his tongue.

“No. Stoppit! What’s the matter with you?”

“You gotta get away from me. S’not safe, Molly. You gotta go.”

“No. Tell me why.”

He can’t possibly tell him. Fjord cannot possibly say, aloud, to Mollymauk that his entire goddamn gut has turned into a sucking black hole of hunger and he’s suddenly, agonizingly, losing all other focus on anything but how hungry he is. How ravenous. How total his need to consume something, anything, his purple bunkmate will do and the horror of that is the only thing that’s keeping him this side of sane. But… but he’s got his hands on Molly’s shoulders, he’s got… he…

Fjord moves before he tells himself to move.

He grabs Molly and wrenches the smaller man sideway slamming him backdown on the floor, something Molly was not expecting of course from his friend and teammate. He grunts as the air goes out of him and suddenly Fjord is on top of Molly, gripping him at the elbows and pinning his arms to the thin pad of his cot and it’s then, only then, when he’s fully immobilized, that fear rushes into the eyes of Mollymauk.

“Fjord what are you doing!?”

He can’t answer. He can’t. He doesn’t dare open his mouth for fear of what he’ll do.

“Fjord, wake up!”

He’s not sleeping though. He’s awake. He’s horribly, horribly awake. He pins Molly’s forearms under his knees and with both hands grabs hold of Molly’s face, gripping his skull between his palms and holding him so tight his fingertips are digging onto Molly’s skin. Molly’s breathing fast, his eyes wide with horror and disbelief because Fjord is… he’s baring his teeth at Molly and his gut is aching inside him. He’s bending down closer and closer, he can feel Molly’s breath against his lips and he can’t – he can’t –

“Hey, friend, calm down,” Molly says suddenly.

It’s like cold fingers slide into Fjord’s brain, taking hold. He doesn’t resist it, let’s Mollymauk’s voice coil into his head and take root there. Molly’s breathing fast, frantic, a lick of magic on his lips as he speaks enthrallment into the air between them. The ache in Fjord’s gut becomes… dimmer, distant, still there but a lesser burn compared to the sudden and interesting need to listen to whatever the hell Molly is going to say. Nothing is more important suddenly than the next words out of Molly’s mouth.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re friends here. It’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine. So, since things are fine, you’re gonna just… let go of me.”

“Right, right,” Fjord hears himself saying.

He takes his hands off of Molly’s jaw and leans back. Now that he can see Molly’s face again, there’s blood now on Molly’s lip where he sank the razor point of his right incisor into skin until it drew. There’s red on his teeth. Fjord can feel now that Molly has his fingernails dug into his thighs, claws burning with strange ice but nowhere near deep enough to stop him. Molly’s breath shakes in his throat.

Fjord watches Molly swallow hard and then say, “Okay. Good. Greaaaat. Now just… get the hell off of me.”

Fjord does that, rolling off and sitting down on the tent floor beside Molly, draping his arms over his knees and just… waiting to hear whatever else his bunkmate is going to say next. There’s a part of him, way, way in the back of his muddled brain that still wants to lunge at and pin his friend to the ground do something unthinkable, but the rest of his mind is screaming, _Run, run, run! RUN MOLLY! RUN RIGHT NOW!_

 

But Molly just… sits up and moves to put his back right at the tent exit (just in case he needs to bail out) and puts two hands in front of him, placating.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare,” Fjord says dreamily.

“Okay. And why are we attacking me over this nightmare?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

Molly’s eyes soften. “I know, friend. It’s alright. Do you still want to attack me?”

“I didn’t want to attack you. I wanted you to leave. I was worried for you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to tell you. You’ll be scared of me.”

Molly’s face pulls in a grimace and he kind of bobs his head. “Welllll, you’re doing that anyway, bud. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t wanna tell you though.”

Molly visibly thinks about that, mulling it over. He’ll never have a better chance than now… “Okay. Tell me on your own time, Fjord. But I need you to be calm right now. Do you think you’re going to attack me in, like, soon when you stop thinking I’m shiny and interesting?”

“What?”

“Is there part of you that still wants to attack me?”

Fjord thinks about it. “Yes, but it’s fading.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’m very relieved.”

“Fuck, me too.” Molly sits down cross-legged across from him. “Let’s just wait this out. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell me when it’s safe. Alright? When you feel normal and like you don’t want to throw me around the tent.”

“It’s almost gone. The talking is helping.”

“Good. I’m glad. Do you want me to keep talking?”

“Yes.”

“Fjord, are your dreams getting worse?”

“Not always. Only sometimes.”

“Do you think it’s going to happen again? Should I be worried you’re going to do this again?”

“I don’t know, Molly.”

A pause.

“Were you really going to hurt me?” Molly asks quietly.

Fjord feels that sting, the low-grade fear in his friend’s voice. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I… I like to think it was gonna pull back. I don’t know if I was gonna hurt you or… or what.” He shakes his head slowly. “Maybe it has something to do with what happened in that cave. That vision of Lagrin. The way my sword’s changed, Molly, I dunno.” A beat. “I’mma little worried now if I’m bein’ honest.”

Molly smiles, but it’s a forced thing. “It’s okay. This isn’t you.”

“I’m real sorry, Mollymauk, I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

“Are you gonna tell the others?”

A long pause. “No. But… you and I need to agree to be bunkmates until I’m satisfied this is a one-time thing. If it happens again, I’m sorry, but I’m telling them. It’s not safe.”

“I agree.”

Molly hesitates again… then moves forward toward him. Fjord’s heart immediately leaps, pounding in his throat but by the time Molly puts a hand on Fjord’s shoulder… the hunger has abated. Molly is just Molly and there’s nothing more attractive about him than usual. Well, outside of that thing he’s doing with his voice right now. That’s still making it very, very hard not to want desperately to keep staring at him.

“Hey. You’re alright. We’re okay. No big. Yasha threw me into a tree once when I woke her on a bad day. You’re okay.”

“I think I’m okay now.”

“Yeah? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, it’s safe now.”

“You’re really, really, really sure?”

“Yeah.”

Molly studies him closely… then backs up again to the tent entrance, taking his scimitars with him from the bedroll. That’s fair. He looks apologetic about it, but only then does he wipe the blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist and quietly he drops the enchantment. It fades like a kiss of heat from the inside of Fjord’s mind, dimming until at last he’s just staring at Mollymauk who looks a bit disheveled and anxious in the half-light now, his tunic pulled off his shoulder, his fingers still dark with blood.

“I clawed you a little. Sorry.”

Fjord rubs his palm across his pant leg, feels the blood and frostbite beneath. “S’alright. Totally understandable.”

“You’re good?”

“I’m good.”

Molly lets out a loud sigh and flops back to sit on his ass rather than poised to dive out the door. “Thank the gods, I thought I was gonna have to fist fight you in the tent.” He checks outside briefly. “Looks like we managed not to wake anyone.” He glances back at Fjord. “Don’t do that again. You’re shaving years off my life and I’m already not super clear on how old I actually am, so those could be valuable years.”

Fjord chuckles, but just barely.

“I’ll try.” A beat. “Thanks for… thank you. For, uh, keepin’ this quiet and not…” A really ugly beat there. “You were completely within your rights…” He pauses again. “If I ever attack you like that again, don’t hold back on my account. Okay?”

“Oh hell no. I’m stabbing you right in the face if you try that again.”

Fjord snorts, genuine this time. “Okay. Thanks a million.”

“Any time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Molly is a little weird but so are his teammates. I just got into this fandom and need to get out all my feels. Anyway, comments are appreciated. I don't know what I'm doing.


End file.
